A harvest in the mountains

The cold winters, the hours of isolation, the endless pap. The Extreme TIMO team has been in the mountains of Lesotho for over 18 months. It has been a tough time, with little visible fruit, but that has started to change. Team leader Sam Williamson shares the latest exciting news.

We couldn’t wish to bring any better news than this: four shepherds in the last few weeks have given their lives to Christ! (One of whom – Thabile, is pictured above!)

“…four shepherds in the last few weeks have given their lives to Christ!”

The team have been using a recently-developed gospel presentation, aimed specifically at the shepherds, that effectively communicates the gospel truths in a context that shepherds understand readily: ‘The Two Kingdoms’. Much like the ‘Two Ways to Live’ presentation it leaves the hearer, who engages in dialogue during the process, with two choices: to live in the kingdom of light and submit their lives to Jesus, or to remain in the kingdom of darkness.

Some shepherds have, as we sadly expect when the gospel is told, rejected the truth, some lost interest and didn’t concentrate on the truth, but four (Thabile, Semora, Chaile and Pele-pele) have responded in faith!

The boost it has given the team, who have laboured so sacrificially for 18 months with little sign of fruit, is huge. God has been enormously gracious in allowing us to see these shepherd friends become brothers in Christ, and he has used our weak language skills, our weak understanding of shepherd culture and our weak faith, to save four of the most marginalised people in Lesotho. All glory (and we mean it) must go to God!

Some fruit in their lives has already started to show, with a desire to learn more from the Bible, requests to pray with our team members, and decisions to change their lifestyle because they want to please Jesus and not themselves.

shepherd-party

The party in heaven may have taken place, but a battle now lies ahead for these young men. They face opposition from their families and ostracism from their community as they stop partaking in ancestral feasts and initiation ceremonies. They will struggle to grow in faith in a country with so few Bible-believing churches. Our encouragement, and the encouragement we will be sharing with them is from Romans 8:35-39:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Related stories

The political history of Chad

Chad is a landlocked country in north central Africa that has been inhabited since the 7th millennium BC. The formation of states began across central Chad in the 1st century AD. Most of these states began as kingdoms, where the king was considered divine and endowed with temporal and spiritual powers…

> Read more

Down to the details

‘Where other lords beside thee hold their unhindered sway, where forces that defied thee defy thee still today, with none to heed their crying for life and love and light, unnumbered souls are dying and pass into the night.’ I can’t sing that verse of Frank Houghton’s ‘Facing A Task Unfinished’ dry-eyed because of how it describes the millions of people in our world who are living and dying without hope…

> Read more

What is TIMO?

Chris and Beka both grew up in Africa with a desire to share the good news of Christ with unreached African people groups. Having led teams on the Indian Ocean Islands for 15 years, they are passionate about the role and importance of teams. Their work now includes coordinating AIM’s Training in Ministry Outreach (TIMO) teams. So, what’s a TIMO team?

> Read more
FindYourFit

There are so many ways you can be a part of reaching Africa's unreached peoples with the good news of Jesus Christ.